Chapter Ten #2
Katie hated him in that moment. Not just for his lofty, autocratic manner, but because she had behaved badly in front of their servants.
She’d hurled his Christian name at him—without ever having his leave to use it in the first place—in front of their housekeeper, and she’d deliberately come late to dinner.
There was no doubt in her mind that her arguments and childish tantrums and rebellion were providing grist for the thriving below stairs rumor mill.
And she knew, not too deep down, that she had overstepped by accusing him of discourtesy. Yes, he was abrupt—even rude—but Dulverton was right about one thing: Jasper had been as honey-tongued as a man could be and he had been rotten to the core.
As she held Dulverton’s cold gaze, she resolved to pay more attention to his actions and less to his awkward manner, no matter how much it might irk her to do so.
“I agree that arriving late for dinner is not just discourteous to you, but those who labored over it. But do you not extend latitude for events beyond one’s control that might account for tardiness?”
“Are you saying that is why you were late tonight? Due to circumstances beyond your control.”
Instead of lying or arguing, she said, “And that is all? I should not argue with you in front of servants or be late for meals?”
He gave her a pained look.
“I do not wish to run afoul of any rules, Your Grace.”
“It is far more likely that you want to know what rules are in place so that you can go about breaking them.”
Katie gave a startled laugh; her new husband had certainly taken her measure uncomfortably quickly.
***
A sharp but not unpleasant sensation squeezed Gerrit’s chest at the sound of her throaty chuckle.
Laughter was something he had little experience with, and he could not recall the last time he’d found humor in anything.
He had not believed he was missing anything in his life, but an odd sense of yearning seeped through him, making him wish that he could laugh with her.
Foolishness.
Gerrit’s new wife did not have the faux, tinkling laugh one heard so often at society events. Rather, it was a discordant squawk that made his lips twitch up at the corners.
“Are you smiling?” Kathryn asked, eyeing him with unnerving keenness.
“No.”
And then she laughed again, damn it.
“I think you are.”
Gerrit ignored her teasing and pondered the worrisome realization that she had intentionally flouted the dinner rule and yet he was fighting a smile.
What the devil was wrong with him? Gerrit rarely found things amusing.
Indeed, his lack of a sense of humor was one of the things that seemed to forever separate him from normal people.
So why was he tempted to smile?
“In future,” she said, pulling him from his uncomfortable introspection, “I will always be at the dinner table at eight o’clock, unless I am physically unable.”
“We eat at six o’clock when we are at Briarly.”
Her smile dimmed, and Gerrit suspected his abrupt reply was responsible. What else should he have said? Damnation! This sort of awkwardness was why he despised socializing.
“Briarly is the name of your estate?” she asked, and then drained a third of her wine in one swallow. It had not escaped Gerrit’s notice that she’d had four glasses of champagne at the wedding breakfast. Was his new wife a dipsomaniac?
He saw she was looking at him quizzically and recalled she had asked him a question. “Correct.”
Her dark auburn eyebrows rose incrementally, as if she was waiting for him to say more. When he did not, those fascinating lips of hers twisted into a taunting smirk. “Well, you needn’t bore on about it.”
Gerrit frowned. Was that sarcasm?
“Where is Briarly?” she asked after a moment.
“How is it that you do not know these details already? I told all this to my man, Court, so that he could pass it along to your dresser—her name is Stone, I believe.”
“Yes, Rebecca Stone.”
Why was she telling him her servant’s Christian name?
“And is that how you prefer to communicate?” she asked. “Through my maid and your valet?”
“What is the point in me seeking you out to share such mundane information?” he asked, genuinely confused.
“Mundane? You consider the subject of where we are going to live mundane? Besides,” she went on, “we barely have anything to talk about as it is, so I think the last thing we should do is pass along the few opportunities we have for conversation to our servants.”
She had a point. “Briarly is five miles from Lyme Regis.”
“I thought your country seat was Spenwood.”
“It is.”
She raised her eyebrows at him yet again.
Gerrit wracked his brains; what more did she want?
She gave a huff of annoyance. “You do not return there in the summer?”
“I visit Spenwood at the start of the season.”
“Shooting season?”
What the devil else would it be? Thankfully, Gerrit did not speak that aloud. “Correct.”
“How long do you stay?”
“Six weeks.” Six long weeks of living with his mother, during which time he spent every moment out of doors either shooting or seeing to estate matters.
Gerrit did not want to think about this year’s visit—and he certainly didn’t want to talk about it—until he was forced to do so. He reached for his fork.
“Are we coming to London next Season?”
He set down his fork. “I do not come to London for the Season, I come for the Session and to do my duty.” The sooner she realized there would be no endless rounds of vapid parties and balls, the better.
She turned her wine glass around and around and around, her gaze fixed on the patterns the foot made on the snowy damask. “But you will come for some part of the year?”
“Correct.”
“You will come, but I will not?”
“I have not given the matter any thought.” Gerrit experienced an unpleasant niggle at his not entirely truthful response.
Kathryn was not only extremely beautiful, she was also wild to a fault.
The last thing he wanted was to watch her ensorcel one man after another during the whirl of a London Season.
Distasteful memories of Christina rose up in his head, and he felt his face settle into a scowl.
He thrust the unwanted reminders of his first marriage to the back of his mind and looked at his wife. Kathryn was not waiting for any answer from him. Instead, she was staring at her wine glass, lost in thought, which meant Gerrit could gorge unremarked on her lovely face.
Hers was a classical beauty made all the more stunningly vibrant by masses of burnished copper hair. The features on her heart-shaped face were finely drawn and delicate, from her large green eyes that tilted up at the outside corners like a cat to her perfect Cupid’s bow of a mouth.
They had socialized several times since their betrothal and Gerrit had discovered—to his growing unease—that he could not look at anyone else when she was in the same room. The urge to stare was even more powerful now that they were married, and she belonged to him.
She is mine, utterly and completely.
Gerrit’s mind was appalled by the potent throb of ownership that gripped him at the primitive thought, but his body rejoiced and thrummed with anticipation.
Again and again, he tried to pry his gaze from her but could not.
Christina had loathed and derided his tendency to fixate on whatever fascinated him.
On one memorable occasion, she had hurled both invective and a half-eaten dish of raspberry fool at his head because she thought he had looked at her too long.
He was no longer an infatuated seventeen-year-old and had become adept at controlling his curiosity.
At least he’d believed he had. But his new wife mesmerized him almost beyond bearing and the wall of detachment he had built brick by painstaking brick between himself and the rest of the world had begun to crumble where she was concerned.
The dark smudges beneath her huge green eyes did nothing to dim her loveliness. In fact, he thought they made her look even more beautiful, not to mention fragile and helpless, two things she most emphatically was not.
Now that he was no longer hostile—or at least not much—about the asinine kissing game that had forced their marriage, he marveled at what sort of mind would conceive of such a thing.
He also burned with curiosity to know who else had been on that bloody list and how many of them she had kissed that night.
Christ, he was an idiot.
Gerrit pulled his uncharacteristically meandering thoughts back to her question about bringing her to London with him.
You have to bring her with you. She is too enticing to leave alone in the country. You’ll come back to find her with another man’s babe in her belly.
The thought ignited an unwanted possessive burning in his chest. It wasn’t jealousy, he assured himself.
It was simple practicality. He’d already had one wife who’d fucked everything in breeches.
He wasn’t going to let that happen again.
Until she was breeding, he needed to keep her close enough to keep an eye on her.
“You will come with me to London,” he abruptly announced. Where I shall keep you on a short bloody leash.
Her eyes glittered like the emeralds they so resembled, and the nostrils of her pert nose flared, making him worry for a moment that he’d spoken that second part aloud.
Her mulish, offended expression was not difficult to decipher.
Gerrit realized that he might have couched that more diplomatically.
Well, it was too late now. Besides, the sooner she knew who held the whip hand and accepted their respective positions in this marriage—Gerrit to give the orders and Kathryn to obey them—the better it would be for both of them.
“And what if I do not wish to go with you?” she asked coolly.
Irritation and an unexpected pang of distress stabbed at him. Gerrit grabbed hold of the irritation but suppressed the pain, viciously driving the pitiful emotion back into whatever crack in his consciousness it had crawled out of.
Echoing the chill in her tone he said, “If you are not breeding by the time I go to London then you will accompany me, regardless of what you wish.”
Her plump coral lips parted, and an angry red flush crept from the exposed swells of her breasts up her chest and throat.
Gerrit’s cock, which had gone soft at her rejection awoke with a vengeance. Why was she blushing? Was she imagining him putting a child inside her? He bloody well was and had been for two long weeks.
Or was she merely furious at his high-handed behavior?
He did not care. Frankly, it was rewarding to get a reaction from her that was not jaded ennui or supercilious mockery.
“If you are enceinte when I come to London,” he went on, savoring her sharp inhalation and what it did to her bodice, “then we shall revisit the matter.”
Still breathing fast, she opened her mouth but then closed it.
Gerrit felt a pang of disappointment at her submission. He had eagerly anticipated one of her tart retorts or cutting set downs. Well, it had been a long day, and likely she was tired. He was bloody exhausted.
Again, he reached for his fork. This time, she didn’t distract him with a question. Indeed, she didn’t say another word for the remainder of the meal.
She waved away the footman’s offer of dessert and abruptly stood. “I will leave you to your port, Your Grace.” She strode from the dining room before he could inform her that he did not engage in the after-dinner ritual unless he was in company.
Bemused, Gerrit stared at the door she had just stormed through.
While he was pleased that he was no longer furious as he’d been at the beginning of dinner nor as irritated as he’d been after she had insisted on playing ducks and drakes with the table arrangement, he could not help feeling as if something important had occurred during the meal that he had missed, entirely.